


Inconvenience Endured For Love's Sake

by Nebulad



Series: Cannibal Witch of the Wilds [7]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/M, Fantasy Racism, Minor Violence, Rumarin Family HC, Thalmor AU, fancy wedding AU, pre-dragonborn, since it's the Thalmor and all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27721501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: Tsabhira looked...tense. “I genuinely don’t have words for what just happened.”“Was the dagger thing too much?” In retrospect it felt like a lot, but she hadn’t been present for every nightmarish summer spent hiding in bushes to get away from someone who didn’t even have the decency to beat him up like a normal bully.“Just sort of baffling, I think. I didn’t expect you to try and kill him.”“I know how this sounds after all that, but I wasn’t actually trying. As always, you’re just my better judgment from minute to minute.”
Relationships: Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Rumarin, Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Rumarin
Series: Cannibal Witch of the Wilds [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/513346
Comments: 7
Kudos: 11





	1. An Easy Choice

**Author's Note:**

> [I make games that have romance in them too. They're text games. It's like reading fanfic but you get to be the main character.](https://heartforge.itch.io/)  
> 
> 
> Now that that's out of the way...could a depressed person make this?! Perhaps. I merely had to ask myself if I valued coherency, a logical sense of chronology, and the smokescreen impression I give off of sensibly writing characters in character...and when I said no, this happened. I was thinking about, since I've been playing ESO and I BLASTED through the Summerset DLC during their free trial period, how much fun it'd be for Tsabhi and Rumarin to be wandering around the island. And then I got to thinking about how Rumarin is a little more Altmeri than he wants to give the impression of (I'm mostly referring to his broad ambivalence about the Thalmor and how he has a line where he says "why in Cloudrest...." or something similar which is a reference to a place in Summerset, plus his general pickiness and prudishness), and I'd thought for a long time that his parents had Something Going On, You Know.
> 
> So we settled on this: Rumarin's parents dropped the travelling circus act to go be Thalmor as tensions started to ramp up again. As a lot of people who are low level cult members, they were reeled in with the idea that the Altmer were threatened by the idea of non-Altmer governance, since they're the longest lived race in Tamriel. They get worse and worse with immersion, Otero dies and suddenly Rumarin has to explain to his parents why he isn't going to also be a Thalmor soldier, and boom. Skyrim. So somewhere in this mess there's a complicated story of a man who isn't willing to hate his parents idealogically, but also can't stand to be around them anymore, doubly now that he has an Unapproved Wife.

Rumarin sat stiffly across from the projection of his mother, knowing that his father was somewhere invisibly off to her side but simply not having the emotional range at the moment to acknowledge that fact. Instead, he focused on the reason he’d called and just tried to brace himself for the fallout. “I want you to release a prisoner from Northwatch Keep,” he said, so slowly and evenly that it didn’t even sound like him.

“That’s a big ask, love.” He knew that, but short of raising an army he didn’t really know what else to do. “We haven’t even heard from you since Otero died. Thank the gods that Ulundil had the foresight to write us of your safe arrival.”  _ Snitch,  _ he thought, unfairly. Ulundil was under the distinct impression that everyone should get along and everything should and could work out with just a little faith, trust, and honesty. Rumarin hadn’t had the foresight to specifically ask him to stay out of it, maybe even a little hopeful back then that the guilt of not contacting them could be assuage by knowing that  _ someone  _ was.

“I know, but you...really have to.”

_ “Have  _ to?” She said it in the skeptical tone that parents take with children when they sense any amount of naivete like a slaughterfish sensing blood in the water, but he tried valiantly to ignore the awkward, sinking feeling it gave him. He was  _ not  _ trying to compel them out of any ignorant idea that they should care what he thinks, nor was he even really appealing to a sense of justice that he didn’t know whether or not existed in them anymore.

“The prisoner is a Bosmer, about yea high,” and he gestured with what he hoped was an unshaking hand to the spot on his chest where Tsabhi presses her head while she thinks, assuring himself that the deep keening feeling in his ribs was exactly the reason he was subjecting himself to this. “She was arrested for possessing an Amulet of Talos, but I can happily testify that she was going to turn it in and the Justiciar ignored her explanation.” He didn’t know if that was true or not, but Ondolemar  _ had  _ asked her for one, so it’s the best story he’s got. 

(Tsabhira does, on occasion, tend to simply accumulate garbage that she has no real use for. He knows she objectively believes in the divinity of Talos, because something something Aedric Relic something something Martin Septim, but he also knows she hates the very concept of Tiber Septim. Regardless it doesn’t matter because despite everything, he doesn’t actually care.)

“That’s a serious enough charge in Skyrim. Can I ask why any of this matters?”

He swallowed hard because this was going to be the difficult part. “She’s my wife.”

Perfect, pin drop silence fell. Any breath or muttered conversation between his parents ended completely as they stared at him, and he wondered for a moment if he should have specifically requested a secure line. They wouldn’t have bothered to get him one, since they naively believed that the desire to be a good citizen was perfectly equivalent to  _ being  _ a good citizen, but maybe it would have tipped them off to send any help they had away. 

And his mother, a roughly mid-level Thalmor bureaucrat, sighed deeply.

“Ru,” she scolded. “Now you’ve upset your father.” His father, some sort of ranking officer but not notable enough to command more than a small squad of unspecialized cannon fodder, tended to become  _ upset  _ at quite a few things. Back when Rumarin was a child and before his parents abandoned the troubadour life to  _ serve and protect Altmer interests as the longest lived race on Nirn _ , it had been a dramatic flair. He could honestly say that regardless of anyone’s interests in either side of the conflict, he simply missed the parents who were more excited about taking him to his first play at the House of Reveries during one of their yearly visits to Alinor than whatever soft-sold racial superiority that the Thalmor discreetly packaged as  _ long term Altmer interests _ .

It was frequently difficult to even reconcile those people with the two before him, as his father staggered into frame.

“Since  _ when?!”  _ he asked with the same level of drama he used to bring to puppet shows for the children of Imperial City. Apparently Ulundil’s letters had left out the wedding, which was just sensible on the horsemaster’s part. Sheer, blinding optimism could only withstand so much direct scrutiny, and apparently balked against the idea that Rumarin’s Thalmor parents would be anything but disappointed that their only son had a Nord wedding to a Bosmer.

“A year and four months, but who’s counting?” He’d been separated from her in the forest of Falkreath for six days and seven hours, which was a much more granular and urgent number. While he  _ did  _ fancy her chances at starting a large scale prison riot, she was only one elf and it ultimately wouldn’t leave her with many hale and whole bodies to fight with, and he didn’t know how to help her on his own. She wasn’t important enough as an individual to rally any army but a handful of concerned faculty at the College.

“So you want us to exert our influence—”

“That’s about it, yes.” He didn’t let her finish because the rest was going to be more self-congratulatory than was warranted. It was a habit encouraged by the Thalmor: everyone had to be better than anyone else, and so you had pencil pushers tormenting their sons about their  _ influence  _ on Alinor while he tried to manage the mid-to-high level panic attack that he’d been maintaining for six days, seven hours, and now fifteen minutes. “She didn’t do anything wrong. It was a misunderstanding by a Justicar who was probably wound too tight from the general trauma of living in Skyrim.”

His father gnawed his knuckles, another melodrama that was more entertaining before he’d become a patriot. “A  _ Bosmer,  _ Rumarin? If you’d told us you were looking to get married—”

“I wasn’t. She just sort of happened.” He didn’t report it with the normal warmth that idea brought him, because he knew it just made things worse for his parents who’d already viewed him as impulsive for heading out to Skyrim after Otero died instead of returning to the island he’d literally never lived on nor particularly liked. Gods forbid he miss out on the joy of signing things for the cause. Perhaps if he was lucky they would ask him to get stabbed in the heart by some sweaty Nord for no real reason besides prolonging a foreign conflict!

His mother nodded a few times, looking deeply put upon; again, nothing that he hadn’t expected when he’d put in the request for a projection at the college, for Tsabhi’s sake. Brelyna was to his left, respectfully pretending she had suddenly forgotten how to comprehend language. “It’s doable, I suppose, since her crime was minor and she’s no one of import.” Not that his mother  _ knew  _ that, but he’d happily let her assume that a Bosmer couldn’t possibly be a high priority prisoner if it got her out faster. “We’ll naturally have some conditions—”

“I’m not getting an annulment. If that’s what you want we can stop here and I’ll figure something else out.” The next step would be to take Tolfdir and go to beg Idgrod to cooperate; she liked Tsabhi, as his wife was endlessly fascinated with Nord soothsaying despite its abject unpopularity with the citizenry of Hjaalmarch. Hopefully that meant he could gently trick her into standing in the crosshairs of the Thalmor for the sake of Tsabhi’s freedom.

“No, a year is too long for that— although if you wanted, I’m sure it could be arranged—”

He just barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “No.”

“In that case, I think you’ll find what I’m asking to be perfectly reasonable. We haven’t seen you in years, after all.” Not since Otero, who’d taken over the whole  _ guardianship  _ thing for them after they decided to run off and play Auri-El’s favourite children, died. They’d returned to Cyrodiil for the funeral and been extremely stiff and awkward in Bruma, and then assumed without asking that their son would follow them back. Of course by then he’d already made up his mind to wander and in the high pressure position of having to explain that impulse, he’d used visiting longtime family friend Ulundil as a smokescreen.

He nodded. “Fine.” He highly doubted that his parents were wholly capably of  _ reason  _ anymore, but he’d done more uncomfortable things for Tsabhi’s sake.

. . . . .

Mystery was part of what made the pursuit of knowledge worth all the effort. If one truly knew  _ everything,  _ then what was the point in wondering? Han-Ilu, a skooma-addicted Dunmer who was older than Tiber Septim and so deeply immersed in magic it frequently felt like time simply slowed into a pudding around his person, had taught Tsabhira that when she was a child. For all Dro’Baad, their caravan leader and another in Tsabhi’s motley array of parental figures, called him  _ a sugar-huffing Dwemer scarecrow stuffed into the skin of an Ashlander two sizes too small for his bones,  _ she’d always respected his views on magic, the daedra, and life in general; she’d thought she’d end up a lot like him.

She had and hadn’t in many ways, but in following him in his worship of Hermaeus Mora it was prudent for her to develop a love of  _ not  _ knowing alongside her hunger to know.

She decided that the Thalmor coming down, politely returning her clothes to her, and escorting her out of Northwatch Keep was something that fell hard into the  _ need to know  _ category. Her eyes spun as they marched her out into the snow, until they finally fell on her husband who looked like he’d just swallowed a mouthful of Blackbriar. “Give my regards to Estoril and Solinar,” the officer with her sneered before turning back to reenter the keep. Two unfamiliar names, and a sudden release from a presumably permanent sentence apparently orchestrated by Rumarin.

She opened her mouth but he shook his head minutely. “As charming as everyone here surely is, I would love for us to be literally anywhere else right now. I’ll catch you up on...everything, later.” He frowns when he says  _ everything,  _ which makes her hands twitch.

“That just makes me want to know more,” she chided him, but quickly slipped her cloak on and followed him out of the compound. “I missed you. Planning a jailbreak is such a drag with only desiccated political prisoners for company.” She expected him to retort with something funnier, as he bore the burden of humour in the marriage, but he just...didn’t say anything. “The Stormcloaks all thought I was a plant, so I didn’t end up making friends anyway.” His head was on a swivel as they tried to find the path in the fresh snow, and she...didn’t even think he was listening. “Azura’s tits, Ru, did you sell them a baby to get me out or what?”

He smiled, small and flat. “See, this is why I need you with me. That would have been  _ so  _ much easier than what I actually did.”

“Made a deal with Clavicus Vile?”

“No, I’m perfectly capable of making bad bargains on my own.”

“Is the College still standing?”

“When I left, yes. As much as it ever was, anyway.”

“Is that where we’re going?” He’d unconsciously— or consciously although it would be extremely out of character for him— taken the lead and was walking with enough urgency that she had trouble keeping up with him.

“No. I already explained the situation to them so assuming you don’t leave me on the spot, you’re technically on sabbatical.” She tried not to be disappointed about her classes, which was easy enough because Rumarin still didn’t say where they were going and she was more curious than invested in Theory of Alteration, a class which many despised on principle because they thought  _ theoretical philosophy  _ was less entertaining than setting things on fire (something that children could do unprompted and without any magic at all). “How are you with long boat trips?”

“I’ve never taken one.” He was still on the lookout, presumably for Thalmor. She hoped he wasn’t...traumatized by their parting, or anything. She tended to repress moments of fear like that, which wasn’t healthy but their burden was her own. She’d hate for Rumarin to linger unnecessarily on the transitory terror of not knowing where she was in a dark wood full of hostile government officials. “Can you tell me where we’re going yet?”

He stopped, casting one last wary glance back in the direction of Northwatch. “I suppose I have to, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“Am I engaged in a political marriage to Ulfric Stormcloak?”

“What? No, gods no.”

“Are you?”

“He wishes.”

“Then it’s fine, Rumarin. Tell me what happened.” Ideally they’d get to Solitude and rent a room first, if only to spare her the cold, but he was a picky sort of person and if he steeled himself on the way then she might never get it out of him.

He watched her for a moment, his expression unusually inscrutable. “My parents got you out.”

“Of the Thalmor—” It clicked, suddenly, and she frowned. “You never told me—”

“Believe me, I’m not  _ proud  _ of it. I was being one hundred percent honest when I said I didn’t care, but my parents were  _ completely  _ taken in by the idea that we’re supposed to be inherently better at government because we’re alive longer than everyone else. They left me with Otero in Cyrodiil, Otero died, and I left them at his funeral to go anywhere but Alinor.” He shifted around awkwardly for a moment, then grinned. “It sounds so  _ dramatic _ , doesn’t it? It isn’t. It’d be a very boring story if they weren’t complete cultists about it, no offence.”

“None taken. It sounds like my cultists are a little bit better adjusted.”

“No kidding. Imagine my shock when I found out that in comparing my parents to daedra worshipping loons, I was being unfair to the loons.” She laughed, still feeling a little...confused. Not everything made sense quite yet.

“Ru, did they ask you for something in exchange for getting me out?”  _ Annulment, surely.  _ It was hard to pinpoint  _ what,  _ in the vast array of possibilities, they didn’t like about her, but given the variety of choice they had there was surely something. They hadn’t been at the wedding, although she wasn’t sure if that was because they disapproved or because Ru hadn’t invited them; maybe some combination of both, which only made the likelihood that their union was on thin ice with the in-laws stronger.

“It’s  _ fascinating  _ to watch you think, do you know that?” He fiddled with some of the embroidery on her cloak. “How many high elves do you know besides me?”

“Ulundil and Arivanya.”

“They don’t count.”

“That weird handsome Thalmor agent we found in the swamp?”

His nose crinkles. “No. I don’t like him.”

“So he doesn’t count?”

“Right. Neither does Calcelmo or his nephew, Niranye, Ondolemar, or Nurelion.”

“Not for the same reason?”

“No I don’t think you’re attracted to Nurel— look that’s not the point. My point is that, how many Altmer do you know besides the ones you’ve met in Skyrim?”

“None.” Bosmer and Khajiit were as close as Dro’Baad was willing to go with inviting those technically affiliated with the Aldmeri Dominion into the fold, and even then only because she was a baby, Gaeleg and Berelin had harboured a deep personal hatred for the Thalmor, and as a Khajiit himself he wasn’t in a position to start turning people away out of prejudice.

He nodded a few times. “There’s a big difference between island High Elves and High Elves that have to be around real people. Even Ondolemar—he was a complete ass when we met him, but he warmed up to you right away.”

“In his own way.” He was still kind of an asshole, but one who was generally pleased to see her. “All right, so we’ve established Alinor is weird. What does it matter?” Hopefully he wasn’t winding his way down to explaining to her exactly why his parents disliked her enough to insist on getting rid of her.

It took him a moment, but eventually he got it out. ”My parents want us to go to Alinor and get married there.” 

There was a heartbeat of silence, and then she audibly sighed in relief, pressing her hand to her chest. “Shegorath’s  _ ass _ , Rumarin, you could have led with that! I thought— well I thought it’d be worse than that!”

“Well that’s the thing, you’re giving me a very  _ relieved  _ reaction while I try to explain to you why this isn’t as easy as it sounds. The Thalmor here are mostly nice to you because they’re just relieved you’re not a Nord, but on Alinor you may as well be. Marrying you is a big enough deal that they think they can do damage control by trying to  _ own  _ it, and the worst part is that it’s not going to work but trust me when I say we’ll be bearing the brunt of the general commentary.”

“Not to be dismissive, but we’ve been married a year and change and people still refer to us as  _ companions  _ because they think elven relationships are strange and exotic, for some reason. I did it once and I can do it again.”

“You say that now but I feel like it would be remiss of me not to warn you that everyone is going to be on their absolute worst behaviour because while I find your height and tendency to talk to apex predators coy and endearing...” He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck in a compulsive gesture of stress. He was clearly worried that she would feel awkward or marginalized by his parents, but she suspected a small part of him was also worried about the extremely real possibility of her not liking them as a result.

She took his hand and squeezed it tightly, making sure he was looking at her directly. “Rumarin, I promise you that they’ll have to do something nearly gymnastically bigoted to make me dislike them more than I already dislike Windhelm in general.” There was a certain threshold of  _ hatred  _ they’d have to clear, and that was the level where she’d convinced Rolff to follow her out of the city to the old shrine of Boethiah and ritually killed him for a god she only mostly knew about.

He smiled, faintly, and pulled her in so she could lay her head down on his chest (well, not precisely; lower than that, right at the part of his ribcage where if she pressed down too hard she could snap a bone that would puncture his lungs, but he said it wasn’t as romantic when she said it like that). “Maybe we’ll get there and I’ll just come off as a paranoid jerk for assuming that everyone would be horrible to you, and we’ll all laugh about it over some weird seafood thing.”

“That would be nice.”

“Just keep in mind as a general goal, we want to avoid having the Thalmor drag you off into another dungeon while we’re there. My parents are exactly influential enough to bully some justicars on punishment posts in Skyrim, and that’s it.”


	2. Rooms (Plural)

It was only sensible for Tsabhira to suggest a portal to the island instead of the aforementioned long boat trip, but the use of mages always came with the distinctive downside of all of them  _ staring  _ at Rumarin like they weren’t all well aware by now that he was  _ not  _ a mage. Worse yet, Faralda was the only one who’d both seen Alinor well enough to get them there  _ and  _ could cast a stable portal, which meant that he was getting a prolonged glimpse into the supremely stuck-up attitudes he was going to have to endure again for the first time since he was a teenager. Everyone he’d ever known could have a quick refresher on how he couldn’t do spells that a child was expected to know before school, and he couldn’t even hide behind Tsabhi as the talented one because they would assume she couldn’t either. 

He appreciated, at least, that she had a little optimism going in, but was also worried that she didn’t understand what she was getting into. The refreshing thing about Nord bigots was that they at least had the bullheaded lack of self-awareness to call you a treehugger or a goldenrod to your face. You never had to _guess_ if they hated you, and you never formed a friendship with one without realising they they were only doing it as a joke, or using you as a rung on their long ladder. Altmer were different, cruel in a way that only a long-lived people who were born and dashed on the spiked rocks of intricate social etiquette based almost wholly upon one’s bloodline could be.

“You look ill again,” Tsabhi murmured as they waited for Faralada to open the gate.

“I’ve been avoiding my parents for so long that it’s going to be awkward.” There’s so many things about him that he only does out of the watchful eye of his not-strictly-strict but terribly  _ concerned  _ parents. His father hates it when he wears his hair up. His mother has never seen him in armour. Neither of them have, really, as Tsabhi was the one to delicately suggest that so long as he had his sword maybe he would let her outfit him with something a little stronger than imitation robes?  _ I’ll throw in the enchantments for free, even,  _ she’d added with a smile that had, admittedly, made him fall a little bit in love with her on the spot.

“Are you ready?” Faralda asked, and her tone reminded him of just how miserable this trip was going to be. Nothing but the subtle Altmer  _ snot  _ for however long his parents dragged out this wedding, which for the longest lived race in Tamriel was going to be too long by half.

He shut his eyes and took Tsabhi’s hand, because regardless of what he thought about showing up on his parent’s doorstep he  _ definitely  _ didn’t want to get separated from her and hurled into Black Marsh or something, and tried to very quickly come to terms with the fact that there was no going back now.

He only opened his eyes when he heard Tsabhi gasp in delight. “It looks like Cyrodiil!”

_ “Don’t _ say that out loud, please,” he urged her quietly. It was true: part of what he’d always liked about Alinor was how parts of it seemed to be a very prim and polished version of the West Weald, right down to the scattered Ayleid ruins that Otereo always told him to bugger off and ignore. It was comforting during the times that his regularly noisy, bustling life slowed down so it was only him, his parents, and a bunch of people who avoided eye contact with them.

“I’m right though,” she said absently. Her eyes barely rested for a moment on one thing before darting to another, and he tried in vain to calm the concern that one of the bored-looking soldiers at the docks were going to wake themselves up by grilling her about what she found so interesting about a foreign port.

“You always are, even when it lands you in prison.” Several people had already turned to look; no doubt because outsiders on Alinor were rare even if the Thalmor were at least half-heartedly trying to pretend at an alliance with the Khajiit and Bosmer for any reason other than that despite their longevity, they can’t sustain the population necessary for a war with humans. He looked to Tsabhira to lead them away, but found that she was looking back at him and...right, he’s supposed to be the one that knows where to go. He doesn’t, of course, but it’s supposed to be him this time.

He’s just about to pick a direction and walk in it, when he hears a very familiar cry of joy and both his parents come rushing for them. Tsabhi tactically steps back just before the two golden hurricanes hit, neither of them casting the wife in question a second glance. That was good: he really didn’t want them to meet her on the docks of all places, with so many  _ eyes  _ on them. “You’re wearing armour!” was the first thing his mother said to him; and maybe Tsabhi’s perpetual correctness was rubbing off on him.

“If you’d been to Skyrim lately, you would too,” he dismissed. She didn’t seem to hate it, probably because Tsabhi was good at everything, let alone something as arcane and complicated as armoursmithing.

“Your hair is up,” his father said, scrunching his nose and reaching for the tie. Rumarin took his own tactical step back.

“It’s dirty,” he lied, but it works and his father lets it go. The excuse won’t last forever, but he’s definitely got ponytail hair by now and doesn’t want to deal with it. “I hope wherever we’re going is nearby?” he added, because they’d now graduated from people openly gawking all the way to poshly looking away while still blatantly eavesdropping.

_ “Very  _ near; we were out for a walk when we saw you on the docks. We didn’t think there’d be anyone in Skyrim to get you here so quickly.” His mother gestured him forward and he reached back for Tsabhi, whose eyes had finally settled on two people who he’d...kind of implied didn’t like her. He was sorry for it now, if only because in retrospect a person without parents would probably be especially nervous about meeting a set of them that were technically hers now. She hadn’t needed the added stress of constant reassurance that they would rather she not exist.

He’d bite the arrowhead, then, even if it meant a couple of locals would know the situation well in advance of the wedding. What did he care, anyway? This whole farce was feeding his parents’ worst impulses, and he’d only promised to play along to a point. “Uh, before we go: this is Tsabhira.”

It occurred to him, as both of them cast each other involuntarily confused looks, that he hadn’t told them her name; there’d only been one Bosmer in Northwatch, so it’d just slipped through the cracks. “Tsabhira Annar-Dar,” she corrected, nodding her head deeply.  _ That  _ was certainly news to him.

“Where’d you find a surname?” he asked without thinking, regretting it when she turned the deep shade of red that only redheads could.

“It’s Han— it’s my mentor’s. He said I could use it.” She hadn’t before, but as much as he promised her he was as dense as a Nord sweetroll, he belatedly understood that she’d used to self-consciously to try and make herself sound more legitimate. She’d never had occasion to feel awkward about her Khajiit name, and they were getting this wedding off to a truly fantastic start by making this her very first time feeling the need to justify her existence.

“Well, one day you’ll have to introduce me and truly get your revenge for how awful I’m making this. Can we go somewhere interior now?” If only to get out of the sun and heat and constant faux-indifferent scrutiny of the bored bystanders.

“I’m Estoril, Rumarin’s mother.” She glared at him, as if he’d forgotten how introductions worked and not purposely tried to bypass another second in public. “This is my husband, Solinar.”

“Good to finally meet you, Tsabhira.” His tone was friendly, even if he didn’t move to shake her hand. She doesn’t seem to miss the gesture, though, merely smiling in a vaguely queasy way and linking her arm through Rumarin’s. “Our son only just informed us of your wedding.”

“I gathered as much; at least it saved you the trip to Skyrim.” Both his parents laughed, although it occurred to both Rumarin and Tsabhi at the very same moment that making jokes about Skyrim being generally intolerable wasn’t as funny when someone actually believed it.

Finally  _ (finally)  _ his mother seemed to realise that people were staring at them. She took his father’s arm and gestured for the two to walk with them, maintaining a very cool facade the entire time. Rumarin had the self awareness to recognise this trait in himself, although he did it by being generally inattentive and almost manically indifferent about everything happening around him. “So, Tsabhira,” and he flinched instinctively at the  _ whole name,  _ even though he calls her by it often enough; something about when mothers use it makes it sound so sinister. “What do you do?”

And then he perks up, because they’ll  _ love  _ this.

“I’m a professor at the College of Winterhold,” she says, clearly thinking the same thing as him. “I teach Theory of Alteration to the adepts.”

“The two of you  _ live  _ in the college?” his father asked with equal parts skepticism that his son would  _ ever,  _ and general derision for the idea of associating the institution in Winterhold with real education. Rumarin snorted, charitably ignoring the snide prod about the place. It’s plenty  _ learn-y,  _ as he’s unpleasantly reminded every time a novice mistakes him for someone who knows anything.

“We’ve got a cottage outside the city. My request.” His father snorted as if he expected nothing more from his son than to get married to an incredibly powerful mage and then gently whinge when her favourite professor asked her to take a few of his classes on his behalf until she buys a small but very warm cottage at the edge of the ruined city.  _ Typical Rumarin. _

“I’m fairly new to the position, so we haven’t lived in Winterhold long. Before that we—” He must have tensed, because she pauses. “We lived in Whiterun,” she concludes carefully, because the real answer is that they were wandering vagabonds who, if they were lucky, lived in a tent.  _ He’d  _ been partial to it, although he does like the cottage, but  _ Whiterun  _ is as good an answer as there is and not technically a lie: she  _ had  _ been briefly paying Arcadia to stay in the flat above the shop, only it was so small that he had physical trouble navigating the low ceiling and short bed.

_ That’s  _ nostalgic. It suddenly felt like a very long time since he’d hit his head off the low beam on the ceiling and then been vaguely flustered when Tsabhira had run her magic-warmed hand against his forehead and he’d stammered out  _ is there anything you can’t do? _

“Rustic,” Solinar offers awkwardly, clearly not knowing a damn thing about any city in Skyrim, really.

“The house is just ahead.” Estoril smoothly covered for her husband’s lack of tact, hurrying them all along the path to the modest house with a stunning view of the docks. “We’ll get you settled in your rooms and then I’m sure Rumarin will want to give you a tour.”

“Room,” Rumarin corrected, feeling tired. It felt like a very fair response, given the only other thing that he had to say was that he didn’t know the city well enough to show her anything, let alone the island that she’d already said she wanted to explore.

“Rooms. You’re unmarried.” Estoril’s voice took on a stern edge, but Rumarin liked to think that he’d matured a  _ little  _ bit. He would have been surprised at the tone even as a child asking for something less reasonable than to not be forced to leave Tsabhi by herself in a strange a faintly hostile environment.

“Room. We’ve been married for a year.”

“The neighbours don’t know that, Rumarin.”

“So I’m not allowed to share a room with my wife, but I have to share with all the neighbours?”

“Don’t backtalk your mother!” Solinar scolded, ineffectually swatting at his shockingly annoyed son. He didn’t remember his parents being so petty, but he also hadn’t seen them properly since before they signed on with the Thalmor.

“I’m not backtalking anyone, I’m only saying—”

“It’s fine Ru,” Tsabhi reasserted herself into the fray, giving him the look that usually tells him she’s going to handle things. With the relief of a man who had no idea what kind of circles he was going to lead her in the very first time he was put in charge, he sighs. “I get the impression the neighbours are nosy.”

“Oh you have no idea,” Solinar complained, opening the door for them. Estoril walked in first, making sure nobody missed how annoyed she still was. If his mother thought she could out-petty him, though, she was in for a dark surprise in just how obstinate he could be. “There was the tiniest alchemical explosion and the lot of them were humming around our yard like birds hardly a second later.”

“I sympathize: I once cast candlelight in Morthal—” Tsabhira of all people does an admirable job of diffusing the tension, despite what he understood to be a general incomprehension of most social cues. It’s a warm sort of feeling, to think that maybe he’d been a good influence.

. . . . .

Tsabhi stepped lightly in the hall, deftly avoiding the single Khajiit guard that patrolled the grounds.  _ It’s a bit of an affectation _ , she thought,  _ to have a guard for a perfectly normal sized house _ ...but she isn’t about to criticize her inlaws, nor cost a man his job for no reason than mild distaste for the spectacle of it all. Rumarin already assured her that all of Alinor was pretty much  _ like that,  _ so at least if she got bored she could go practice her Ta’agra on a waitress or something. Outsiders seem to be unusual for the high elves, unless they were employed.

She found Rumarin’s door fairly easily, her eyes already adjusted to the dark and her ears carefully tuned to the absent way he hums and sighs to himself; she soundlessly opened the door and rushed towards him, because he was definitely going to yell whether or not she managed to clamp her hand down over his mouth first.

And he does, because she’s never wrong.

“It’s just me!” He went limp and she took back her hand, sitting up on his stomach and letting him gather himself.

“You know, the most embarrassing part of that was that I fully expected you to show up at some point, so I don’t know why I immediately assumed death had come for me.”

“Your instincts are better than that,” she scolded. “If you thought you were dying you’d at least draw your sword.”

“That’s a lot of faith in someone that just screamed into your hand.” He rested his hands awkward and hesitant on her hips, like she was going to brush him off because his parents were a little rude to her. She was actually impressed: they were less unkind than she expected, and he was more defensive of her than was strictly necessary. The gesture was appreciated, though: she didn’t think she rightly knew how to operate without their strange little dynamic, and part of her had been afraid that he’d act differently in front of his family. “So...you wouldn’t happen to know how Nords get divorced, would you?”

She snorted and stretched out, before taking her place on his chest. He seemed like he was inclined to be awake for a while, so maybe he’d lose that nervous edge if she was a little more affectionate. “I imagine it involves a lot of yelling, whatever it is. Why, are you worried?”

“No.” She played with the collar of his shirt absently. “Yes.” She also noted that he’d washed his hair, presumably at the behest of his father who was  _ determined  _ that Rumarin wouldn’t get away with putting his hair up for however long this wedding took. She’d seen him with his hair down before, but she had to assume that the Altmer did something different than Rumarin if only because she couldn’t picture him fitting into this strange and haughty puzzle. “No,” he decided finally. “You’re being very polite, and they’re...behaving, sort of.”

“So far, not as bad as what you told me it would be,” she agreed. “But, I’m ready for it to get worse.”

“Don’t say that. I’m hanging on by the thread of you thinking it’ll be better than it will be.”

“It’s just occurring to me that at our wedding I just wore my newest tunic. If Brelyna hadn’t been there to put flowers in my hair I wouldn’t have thought to do anything.” Now there was a woman who was presumably invested in how she looked, and would erroneously assume that Tsabhira was even  _ more  _ invested. “I think your mother and I have a misunderstanding on the horizon.”

“Well, look on the bright side: you’re allowed to wear your hair up whenever you want.” He made a face and she forgot the dread in her stomach, laughing lightly. “It’s not even the wedding, he just wants me to walk around like this!”

“You could try cutting it all off,” she suggested, running her fingers through it. He took very good care of his hair, except that he was rough with it, so she fully expected the offended noise he made and laughed.

“That would be a surrender. I fully intend to at least leave him with the knowledge that the second I step foot off this island it’s going back up.”

“He’ll be crushed.” She was more tired than she thought, after a full day of maintaining an illusion spell to hide her tattoos, and was still up in the air about whether or not she should stay the whole night. Estoril and Solinar definitely seemed like the type to barge in, and after the argument about rooming…

“You’re thinking too loud,” he groused, rolling her in a clear attempt to get comfortable enough to sleep. “I haven’t slept in a bed since Falkreath and my parents aren’t going to ruin  _ that  _ for me on top of everything else.”

“Should have come with me to prison,” she murmured back, her decision made for her. “Feathers in every mattress.”

He’s quiet for just long enough that she wondered again if the prison joke was poorly timed and maybe she should lock the door and force him to talk about it. “Shh, can’t hear you because I’m asleep,” he said finally, and she snorted.

That was one way to deal with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want his parents to be like, _bad_ people. Wildly bad people. The sort of people you never contact for anything because then they know where you are at any given time. They're just bad in the sense that they lack critical thinking skills and can't separate bigotry from fact, and sometimes when you're immersed in a cult it happens.
> 
> I don't know why I fixated on Rumarin's hair. A lot of people draw it down and I like the look a lot, and I understand he just has a ponytail because Skyrim only has so many hair options, but I also like the idea of something small for him and his dad to argue about that becomes a stand in for bigger issues.
> 
> Don't like, hold your breath about it though. I let so many plot threads go in this.


	3. Ceru(m)(val)

“If you just part it down the middle—”

“You are  _ so  _ concerned about my hair.” He already had it down and was determined to not give Solinar another inch of concession.  _ Otereo  _ never cared how he wore his hair (although back then he  _ had  _ worn it down, mostly due to the distinct lack of surprise attacks from the various poorly outfitted and almost comically confident criminals littering the countryside). “I thought we were supposed to be picking up some kind of gift for the stupid priest.”

“Rumarin!”

“Sorry, I meant that we had to pick up the bribe for the priest who thinks being under six feet is a moral failing.”

Solinar rolled his eyes, putting on the  _ unbearable  _ ‘I know best’ face that Rumarin could only assume was a full unit in Thalmor training. “You’re not doing her any favours by being so  _ aggressive,  _ Ru.”

“You’re right. I’ll let this total stranger act shocked that I managed to notice her from all the way up here after I get him a present so he doesn’t kick us out of the temple.” Tsabhi had been mean to plenty of people on his behalf for less reason than he was being given to return the favour. Besides, it just gave her a chance to look extremely reasonable in comparison. “What are we getting him again?”

“We are  _ donating  _ a garden out of the goodness of our hearts, regardless of the temple’s decision.”

“Ha. That’s funny.” And here he’d thought his father’s sense of humour was gone the way of Talos.

“Funny?” Oh. Well then.

“She’s a wood elf? And you’re donating a garden?” Solinar paled, which was almost as good as the joke in the first place. “Can we name it? I’m thinking something subtle, like  _ Little Valenwood.” _

“Do you  _ ever  _ stop? I’m already embarrassed enough—”

“Not for the right reason,” he muttered, then groaned because there was no point in starting  _ that  _ argument, but by pointing out the joke he was only prolonging this stupid, unnecessary errand. “Well fine then, I won’t tell the stupid priest the punchline.”

_ “Rumarin.” _

In the end the stupid priest in question awkwardly received the donation, and thus agreed to officiate a wedding between an Altmer and (shudder) an outsider, and even accepted Rumarin’s impertinent insistence that they plant apple trees. If he was going to be denied  _ Little Valenwood  _ (not even a  _ good  _ joke, since she’d never even been there, but he couldn’t have  _ anything  _ in Alinor), then he’d at least make sure that somewhere down the line some bored initiate could have a snack while kneeling in contemplation, on behalf of the Bosmer that only mostly stuck to the Green Pact tenants.

The walk home was fine, except for Solinar’s  _ constant  _ prodding about how he was going to wear his hair for the wedding and very pointed notes about how several  _ timelessly  _ great wizards had parted their hair down the middle, actually, and wouldn’t it be interesting to see how he looked—

Upon entering the house, both of them froze. There was a deep, deep... _ bad  _ atmosphere. Rumarin had never thought to ask if Tsabhi  _ consciously  _ brought the temperature in the room down by ten degrees when she was upset, but he knew what a room felt like when she was contemplating a violent crime. Considering she’d been left alone with his mother to see about a dress, this was a  _ poor  _ omen.

“Estoril?” Apparently his father wasn’t immune to the atmosphere either, and immediately made a beeline for the kitchen where his mother and Tsabhi were sitting together. Well, Tsabhi was sitting; Estoril was attacking meat with a cleaver, while their chef looked on nervously.

“I’m making Tsabhira dinner,” she all but snarled, and Solinar wisely stopped mid-stride. Rumarin had no such reservations and sat next to his extremely rigid wife.

“How was shopping?” His father asked, not picking up on the extremely obvious cue of the meat and the cleaver.

“You’d think no elf in the city had ever worn a short skirt,” she snapped, slamming the knife into the meat. “As if their measuring tape only worked one damn way. And then the gall of suggesting that her measurements would be too complicated to even make an  _ attempt.” _ Another vicious stroke of the knife.

“Now that Rumarin’s home…” Tsabhi started, her first words since he walked in. Estoril nodded and gestured with the hand not holding the cleaver, and his wife stood and took his hand. “Come show me something,” she urged him quietly. “I need to be outside.” He stood, his gut dropping. “Estoril, thank you for...talking to people for me, today,” she added.

“I wish it would have turned out differently.” As Solinar cautiously approached his furious wife, Rumarin carefully guided his out of the house and back into the street.

“So…” he started, and she sighed deeply.

“I thought I wouldn’t care about the dress, and I  _ don’t,  _ but your mother got so upset and I...I don’t know…” She pulled him along, firmly ignoring every other pedestrian: fine by him, honestly. “It meant so much to her!” she continued. “And it felt like one of the more important things I could do to get her to like me—” she jumped a wall, onto a grassy hill that overlooked their corner of the city.

“If it makes you feel better, she doesn’t wield a knife like that for someone she hates.” He’d  _ learned  _ to juggle knives from his mother, and anything that had her doing something herself instead of passing off menial tasks to someone else for the sake of her Altmer pride was certainly worth celebrating: not that he was celebrating the blow his wife had taken, but it was nice that his mother was on her side about the ordeal.

She waited until they were at the top of the hill to stop and drop, laying down in the grass with a groan. “I know. I appreciated it, but I mean...it was  _ so  _ important to her that I thought  _ maybe I’ll try to care about it.  _ And then...everything else. I’m upset that I’m upset about it.”

He sat down, then flopped back into the grass beside her. “Sorry,” he offered, having nothing more constructive to say. “I mean, you know I have a hard time believing anyone would be anything less than vaguely awestruck when interacting with you, but that’s just because I’ve seen you fight a giant spider.”

“Oh yes, very impressive of me to climb as high as I can and hope you kill it before I have to turn around.”

“Well I suppose I can forgive you for that since I do the same with every other wild thing we come across. Remember when we found the Hist tree?”

“Ysolda didn’t know if that was really a Hist.”

“Whatever kind of tree it is, you very reasonably interacted with the giants while I…”

“Stole sap, if I remember correctly.”

“Avoided the giants out of cold terror, if my parents ask.  _ If  _ you happened to need a mild sleep aid, however, I do have the materials to make that happen.”

“And you say you’re no good at alchemy.” She rolled onto her stomach and looked at him, taking a deep, slow breath. “You know, you’re a lot more  _ Altmer-y  _ than what you give yourself credit for.”

“Given your experience today, that doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“No, not all that.” She waved her hand as if to banish the very concept of rude seamstresses. “It’s just, I would speak to your mother, and listen to her speak to people, and it all sounded  _ vaguely  _ familiar. Snottier, sometimes, but you’re not as removed from it as you tell me.”

He snorted, rolling his shoulders against the hard ground. “There’s a threshold of acceptability when it comes to how much you know about Altmeri history and your own bloodline. Seeing as how I have no great ancestors to speak of and my parents were, up until recently by high elf standards, travelling performers, it doesn’t matter how many landmarks I recognise.”  _ Did that sound bitter?  _ Maybe he was; he wouldn’t be accosted in the streets, but living in Alinor and giving the whole culture the opportunity to dissect his every flaw and shortcoming wasn’t a thought he liked to entertain. Even in Cyrodiil, his lack of magical ability had been a quiet disappointment for both his parents before they’d even signed on with the Thalmor.

“Well, so long as we’re trapped in Alinor with all the high elves, they’re trapped here with us too,” she assured him, then put her forehead down on the ground. “I just have to figure out what to do about no one in this soul-sucking city wanting to cooperate with me.”

“You can do that projection-thing, can’t you?”

“Mhm.”

“So, ask Taarie and Endarie to portal in and sew something. I’m sure they’ll be delighted, right after they’re rude of off-putting for no particular reason. Who knows, maybe they’ll see the other seamstresses and finally snap. Endarie’s got about one bad day left in her before she assaults someone anyway.”

She brought herself abruptly to her knees, turning to look at him with an embarrassing sort of intensity. Usually he’d chalk it up to her trying to very quietly use magic to burrow into his brain just for the satisfaction of having done so, but she leaned over and kissed him so it wasn’t exactly a subtle look. “That is...a very good idea.”

“Tragic that I don’t have them more often.” He was fairly positive his face was red, which he had to solve before they got back to the house.

Solinar would  _ know,  _ and he’d never hear the end of it.

. . . . .

Once, during a long stretch of waiting for Tsabhi to finish doing whatever very important business she was handling in Windhelm, Rumarin had started a conversation with Revyn Sadri of all people. Usually he avoided the man— something about charismatic merchants was deeply off-putting to Rumarin, as if everything they said was some sort of trap for him to walk into— but something about that lazy afternoon and possibly the half-jug of mazte he’d had brought the two together.

It’d been shortly after the wedding, which had gotten Sadri talking about Dunmer weddings. Apparently even outside of the Great Houses, there were extreme rules about when, where, and  _ if  _ two engaged parties could see each other. Whole weddings, planned centuries in advance, had fallen through on some accidental eye contact when two people wandered into the wrong room  _ (sometimes orchestrated by a spiteful family member,  _ Sadri had told him, taking far too much pleasure in the idea).

Luckily, there was no such thing for Altmer. While equally anal retentive, the high elves skewed in the opposite direction where centuries of wedding planning was constantly dogged by repeated assessment of worth. That didn’t matter so much to Rumarin, who would be on the losing end of such a judgement, but it  _ did  _ mean that rather than touring academies with his mother to hand out select invitations, he could sit askew in one of the overstuffed armchairs in Tsabhi’s fitting room and everyone would pat him on the back for his diligence and carefully planned schedule.

“I don’t suppose your husband could trouble himself to be useful for any significant amount of time?” Endarie drawled, even through the pins in her mouth.

“If you ask him nicely, I’m sure,” Tsabhi said lightly, reaching out for him. He groaned as he lifted himself to his feet walking over to obediently follow Endarie’s snapped instructions. He was wordlessly directed to hold a piece of fabric around her waist, which required an embarrassingly intimate hold in front of two sullen elves who didn’t really like them, but whose scorn was comparatively comforting. “Hello,” she hummed, reaching out to straighten his robes.

“Good to see you again, cerum.”

“Am I cerum or ceruval?”

“Are any of us anything?”

“N’wahs, if the Dunmer are to be believed.”

“Fetchers.”

“S’wits.”

Taarie made a noise  _ very  _ similar to a backed up automaton, tossing down a pair of shears. “Would the two of you shut up?”

“We’re only contractually obligated to stand so much witless banter,” her sister agreed, placidly sewing away. “Besides, you’re in Alinor, not Vvardenfell.”

“I don’t know any High Elven insults,” Tsabhi protested.

“Apraxic,” Rumarin suggested, and Taarie snorted.

“That’s a caste, not an insult.”

“Although the caste is an insult.”

“Nebarra,” he returned, and Tsabhi frowned.

“It’s an insult then? That explains why your mother got so upset.” He wasn’t rightly thrilled to hear that people were calling her a insult for  _ outsider  _ either, come to think. His cousin used to use it for him whenever he visited, and it was part of the reason he’d rolled the dice going to Skyrim instead of Alinor.

“Adma’na,” he suggested, opting for the cooling balm of a subject change.

“That’s not an insult unless you’re a child or a dolt,” Endarie snorted.

“Ah,  _ that’s  _ why I know it.”

“You must’ve heard it a lot, if your pronunciation is anything to go by. Is it too much to ask that you hold the fabric firmly? We already know you’re married, there’s no need to hold her so limply.”

“How are there two seamstresses here covered in pins, but I’m still somehow necessary to this process?”

“I can hold it with magic,” Tsabhi said, patting his hands as if to indicate that he actually  _ was  _ unnecessary. That hit a bit of a nerve that he hadn’t realised was so tender: they were, in the eyes of the neighbours, an unmarried couple, which to his parents meant that there was a certain amount of distance that should be maintained between them even just in front of the house staff. He hadn’t previously thought of himself as the sort of person who craved a certain amount of intimacy, but it was fast becoming clear that there were a lot of small ways in which Tsabhi touched and straightened him throughout the day that he was starting to keenly feel the loss of.

“Well let’s not be hasty,” he protested, adjusting his grip. “Now I have to prove to Endarie that I am a more than capable substitute for pins.” 

“Pins are easy to lose in a garment. At least with you we can rest assured that even if we dropped you off in the woods and left, you’d eventually find your way back if only to be spiteful.” Rumarin had already resigned himself to the idea of  _ not  _ holding whatever commentary Taarie and Endarie offered against them, since they  _ had  _ come a long way to work with Tsabhi when no one else would, so in a perfect world he would have already prepared himself for the general annoyance of having them around.

...and yet the world remained imperfect and he rolled his eyes once the two turned away to plan something for some layered thing— frankly, despite his supposed involvement in this process, he understood next to nothing about what was going on and had no valuable input. Business as usual, except that for once Tsabhi was right there with him and had done very little but stand there and make faces at him.

“Your mother said that they’re almost done with the prep work,” she said, pushing his hair out of his face as it fell forward. Maybe his father would let him wear his hair up if he pleaded the case that he had to look down at Tsabhira.

“Well that’s a relief. If we spend anymore time here I’m going to start missing Skyrim.” He already did, deeply. He wasn’t even sure why; things had been progressing quickly and with little to no input from him, but it’d been a  _ little  _ chilly the other morning and he’d been  _ assaulted  _ by emotion.

“She has a job for you.”

“Not a good sign that she’s getting you to tell me about it.”

“You did say that you find my height and fondness for apex predators coy and charming.”

“So I’ve brought this on myself?” She nodded enthusiastically and he sighed. “All right, fine. What did I volunteer for?”

“We need to go to something called the College of Sapiarchs—”

“No.”

“—....and give someone named…”

“Sarulian.”

“...an invitation. I suppose that means you’re familiar?”

Endarie looked up from her draft table, and it occurred to Rumarin that he was holding fabric that she wasn’t even sewing. “I fail to believe you know a  _ sapiarch.”  _ He let go of Tsabhi, somehow dreading going to Lillandril more than he was embarrassed that he’d had his hands all over her for no particular reason.

“He’s my cousin, and not a full sapiarch if anyone cares.”

“And what are  _ you?” _

“Endarie,” Tsabhi warned, stretching out once Rumarin gave her the space to do so. “It’s not  _ that  _ surprising. It sounds like everyone and their dog in Alinor is trying to become a one.”

“Of course they are; that hardly  _ devalues  _ the position.” At Tsabhi’s severe look, she sniffed. “Well, either way they won’t let either of you in.”

“Perfect,” Rumarin said, dropping back into his chair and folding his arms over his chest. He didn’t care if it made him look petulant and jealous, even if he was only  _ one  _ of those things. “I’ll throw the invitation into the sea and by the time they realise we didn’t deliver it, we’ll be home again.”

“Surely they’ll let Rumarin in.” Tsabhi politely ignored him, because for some reason she was still determined to give this experience in benefit of the doubt. Sarulian didn’t deserve it; if he thought he could do it, he would sneak out and visit the complete sload himself and let her spend another blissful day only being loudly whispered about in the street. It was still better than  _ any  _ time spent in the company of a borderline  _ olympic  _ bigot.

“Doubtful. Civilians, especially outsiders, are rarely allowed in, to encourage focus and thoughtfulness unburdened by—”

“Idiot cousins,” Rumarin supplied helpfully. “Although you can imagine my thrill when I was told that I wasn’t going to be able to spend my summers being tormented by Nirn’s foremost ponce anymore.” His last interaction with the vicious arse had been Sarulian reminding him exactly why everyone was celebrating him: because he was good at magic, unlike Rumarin. He’d been a teenager by then, and the raw certainty that his cousin was right and his parents were equal parts proud of their nephew and embarrassed that Rumarin would never follow in such prestigious footsteps had been scalding.

How presumptive of him to think that he was going to escape this experience without anyone dressing down his many flaws. Being face to face with the font from which sprang a thousand insecurities really took the wind out of his sails about the whole ward thing. 

He casted it briefly, as if to remind himself that he could, ignoring the thoughtful way that his wife was watching him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recklessly expanding Rumarin's family, no reason, no hand of god on the wheel, just me with my foot on the pedal and the wind in my hair.
> 
> Also this chapter is my expression for clothing based intimacy that will come back once, and was meant to come back twice except realistically I had no way to work it back in and frankly it didn't _really_ fit because it's more suited for a piece where the dress is more complicated. As it stands this is like...Cinderella's wedding dress. Like yeah it's nice but it's very plain. Ariel has the best wedding dress of the princesses...or well, I guess Tiana's is good too. I don't hate Cinderella's but come on, Ariel's sleeves? We should all be so lucky.


	4. Better Judgement

Endarie was correct and neither of them were allowed in; the fact that Tsabhira asked seemed to baffle the portal guard into politely crossing to asked Sarulian to come to them while they lounged an unsuspicious distance away from the Thalmor guard. Part of Rumarin hoped that somewhere in between the guard arriving on the other side and informing Sarulian that his estranged cousin was here to see him (and no doubt urgently gossiping about the Bosmer he brought with him), the portal would just stop working.

And no one would no how to solve it.

And then the college would collapse into dust…

“Do you think if I asked nicely, Winterhold would send this college into the sea too?” he asked quietly, absently reaching out to fiddle with the weird bauble that his mother had braided into Tsabhi’s hair. The dress fiasco had brought them closer together, which was nice in the sad way where his parents were still thoroughly indoctrinated agents of the Thalmor who would firmly refuse to examine their relationship to the institution that considered his wife a lesser elf.

“We didn’t destroy Winterhold,” she scolded. “And no.” Even this bare contact, barely touching her, was a little too scandalous for the sapiarch-hopefuls scattered around, who at least seemed content to just stare and giggle a little. And to think, the Nords couldn’t tell if they were married or not at all, whereas a teenager had just gone pink watching him play with her hair.

“Well, I see Skyrim has certainly been comfortable for you, cousin.” He gripped her braid more firmly, trying to unclench his jaw before it looked like the very sound of Sarulian’s voice made him wish for the prick to fall on a sword. “I suppose the barbarians would hardly mind such a public display.”

“You know what that means,” Rumarin said, looking at Tsabhi. Her expression was as calm and reasonable as the moment she suggested that Rolff Stonefist accompany them outside the city, as she was ‘afraid of bears’ and ‘hardly travelling in safe company’, which was really improving his mood.

She shook her head. “I don’t.”

“I’ve ruined your reputation. Now you  _ have  _ to marry me.” Sarulian choked.

“And what about  _ my _ reputation is ruined? You’re the hussy with your fingers in my hair.”

“You’re getting  _ married?!” _

“I would think that was made obvious by the strange woman I was making a fairly public display with.” Tsabhi laughed, and that marked the most successful interaction he’d ever had with Sarulian.

“Altmer really are funnier than Tamriel gives them credit for. Nords who hate each other have more sexual energy than this.”

And maybe he got a little cocky, because his cousin had been stricken too dumb to speak. “She’s not wrong. I don’t even think they realise how fraught they make the atmosphere of a room.”

“Rumarin are you  _ insane?!” _

“A common mistake but somehow still no.” He also arguably understood more now about madness both religious and incidental than Sarulian would even accidentally know in his whole life, not that  _ that  _ particular realm of knowledge would successfully one-up his cousin because what did he care about real people?

“Stop joking around; do your parents know about this?” It was almost funny how upset the man was, and funnier now that in these moments his cousin felt more similar to him than he ever had. He’d always been this enormous figure in his memories, older and taller and smarter than Rumarin in every conceivable way: now he was just a slight Altmer with the patrilineal long chin, narrow hips, and ability to raise his voice an almost operatic amount of octaves at the slightest inconvenience. Surely there was a god who would strike him down for the ripple of satisfaction that echoed through him upon realising that he might even have been  _ bigger  _ than his cousin, as Tsabhi kept telling him that ephemeral swords were ultimately still swords.

“No, I thought about surprising them for their anniversary.”

Sarulian paced in a frantic little circle, then looked around as if they were suddenly surrounded by people who cared beyond the delicious little scandal of seeing two strangers be affectionate in public. “You’re not unreasonable, Rumarin—”

“Oh I assure you I am.”

“This  _ cannot  _ happen.”

“It can, it will, and it actually has. Here’s the dark family secret for you: I married her a year ago.” A year and some change, as she’d so charmingly put it. He glanced over at her and found that she was unsurprisingly staring at the elf having a meltdown in front of her with a thoughtful scowl. Maybe under normal circumstances, with any other insufferable arse, he’d include her in the spectacle. Not now, he decided; not with someone he couldn’t technically sign off on her sacrificing.

“A  _ nebarra?  _ Even  _ you  _ must have— what are you doing?” He took a surprisingly well-thought step back as Rumarin stood, rolling his shoulders. There was a pleasant sort of prickling feeling taking over the parts of his brain that worked so hard to think things through, and he intended to take full advantage of this temporary lapse in judgement.

Tsabhi caught his wrist and gave him a look, but ultimately allowed him to gently shake her off. “Do you want to see a trick, Sarulian?” he asked, setting his feet the way his mother taught him for balance.

“What?”

He looked back at Tsabhi with a shrug. “Sorry dear, slowness runs in the family. I said do you want me to show you a  _ trick.” _

“No, I don’t, I want you to explain to me—”

“Oh I never explain the tricks. That just makes them boring.” He held out his hand, breathing deeply in the way that Tsabhi did. She said it discouraged frustration, and it would only be embarrassing at this point to not be able to summon a dagger because he wanted to  _ throttle  _ Sarulian. Luckily, it materialized in his hand. “Good, they didn’t change the spell.”

He summoned two more and started to juggle. It would also be embarrassing to find out after all this time that he’d fallen out of practice, but it came back as muscle memory. The crowd was suddenly ten times as interested, and Rumarin was just as pleased with how embarrassed his cousin was that everyone was gathering to watch. He pivoted lightly, angling himself to stand in front of Sarulian. It was convenient that he’d tried to shuffle away at just such an angle that he was standing in front of an old, broad tree.

Rumarin threw a dagger at him.

He yelped but wisely didn’t move, and it embedded itself in the wood beside his head. The crowd gasped in delight; for the sake of the show, he didn’t bother to dematerialize the dagger he’d thrown. It was harder to juggle  _ and  _ maintain the spell, but apparently he really had gotten better at magic. It didn’t strain so much as it had when he was doing this professionally. “Oh, don’t be so delicate. I don’t panic every time you do...well, whatever it is the sapiarchs actually do.”

He throws another one, in the space between his arm and torso.

Everyone clapped because they assumed this was planned and not a retaliatory measure. “Rumarin, enough of this,” Sarulian hissed, arthritically tense, tomato red, and trying not to draw attention to either.

He threw two, rapid fire: one of the other side of his torso, and the other between his legs.

“One for the other side of his head?” he asked the crowd, and they cheered while Sarulian attempted to kill him with a look. He took the final dagger, not much to juggle anymore. He wound back and with a deep breath, threw it. It was wrong from the start, momentum lost since he wasn’t juggling anymore and thrown sloppily. His gut clenched violently as he contemplated how much trouble he’d be in for killing his cousin—

—and the dagger stopped right in front of Sarulian’s nose.

Rumarin spun to face Tsabhira, whose arm was extended out. She turned her palm and the dagger dissolved, to the uproarious applause of the crowd who thought Rumarin was doing it. “This is the part where you bow,” she advised him, putting her arm down. He turned and did so, and the crowd went wild even as Sarulian sunk to the ground with spent adrenaline. He went to help his cousin up, grasping his forearm and tugging him as roughly as he could manage. He helped,  _ maliciously. _

“Tsabhi’s probably hit her limit on conflict by now, so I imagine she’ll come to give you the invitation to the wedding even though you’re a complete sload who  _ should  _ be locked on an island away from normal people. Take the invitation, walk away, and keep in mind that I don’t need your whole stupid school to fall into the sea: just you.” He let go at the same time Sarulian moved to tear his arm out of his grasp, and he staggered clumsily back against the tree.

With the reliability of a high elven timepiece, Tsabhi appeared at his side. “This seems like the inopportune time to say so, but we came to invite you to the wedding.” She held out the envelope and Sarulian snatched it from her and shoved Rumarin’s shoulder to stagger past him, back towards the gate; back towards his stupid little island and his stupid school.

“I miss that horrible haunted stone nightmare you teach at,” Rumarin said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Turns out there’s worse things than novices constantly approaching me for help with their homework.”

“I genuinely don’t have words for what just happened.”

“Was the dagger thing too much?” In retrospect it felt like a lot, but she hadn’t been present for every nightmarish summer spent hiding in bushes to get away from someone who didn’t even have the decency to beat him up like a normal bully.

“Just sort of baffling, I think. I didn’t expect you to try and kill him.”

“I know how this sounds after all that, but I wasn’t actually trying. As always, you’re just my better judgment from minute to minute.”

“And not even a thank you,” she tsked, still staring a hole into the back of Sarulian’s retreating head. “Did you do it because he called me the name I don’t care about?”

“You know I’ve never thought about it, but as far as insults go it  _ is _ just sort of perplexing. The Dunmer really have a stranglehold on hurtful-sounding names to call people.” He hoped for a moment that she would forget that she asked, but she nudged him with her hip and looked up and... “Yes, fine, I may have accidentally committed some light attempted murder because he was rude to you.”

“Well, that answers who got all the charm in the family.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's goofy, you know it's goofy, that's why it's going up at 2AM/EST. It's so I forget that I published it at all.
> 
> Also yes, Tsabhi does immediately assume her husband intentionally tried to murder his cousin rather than he just did what we in show business call "a big oopsie".


	5. This One Reappears

Rumarin hadn’t been  _ excited  _ about the prospect of a Nordic wedding; maybe a little wistful, missing Otero as he usually did and wishing that he could show his old mentor that it  _ hadn’t  _ actually taken a full Altmer lifespan for him to loosen up enough to properly date: all it took was a Bosmer who wasn’t half as self-conscious about where her hands were at any given moment. Besides the vague spectre of Otero, however, he hadn’t been overly invested in Riften let alone their ramshackle temple that was lined with a contradictory amount of gold.

The more his mother talked, the more he understood that this ‘proper’ wedding was going to be ten times the effort and far more alienating. “Your father, cousin, and I will all be gathered at the front. Does she have family we should plan for?” Clearly Estoril was a little apprehensive about the idea of a clan of Bosmer showing up, and part of him would have  _ delighted  _ in the prospect of telling her that the reality was a ragtag group of opportunists and daedric mages of various races specifically excluding Altmer...but he decided to tactically avoid mentioning as much.

“I don’t think so— I mean, she definitely has a family but I don’t know that they’ll be able to show up.”

“I’m sure we could arrange a temporary allowance for the wedding.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” The front door was thrown open and Sarulian entered the room with Solinar. His cousin hadn’t breathed a word of what happened at the college which was probably the funniest way for that whole situation to resolve itself, and also the most convenient as he didn’t have to argue with his parents about the morality of almost killing Sarulian.

“Your wife has apparently begun a trend,” he said tightly, looking extremely put upon about whatever imaginary insult Tsabhi had dealt him by existing.

“Whatever it is, I’m sure it looks terrible on all the other elves. Altmer just don’t have the same colouring, and she’s a redhead on top of that.” Part of him was tempted to summon a dagger, just to see what he’d do, but his impulse to avoid conflict won out over his petty spite.

“There’s a  _ khajiit  _ outside,” he corrected irritably.

“There’s one inside too.” He suspected that Kar-sa caught Tsabhi rushing off to his room at night more often than he let on, but liked her better than he did his employers.

“This one’s different: he’s  _ enormous,”  _ Solinar said excitedly. “Apparently he was a prisoner in Cyrodiil before the Imperials found out that he was a Thalmor veteran, and they deported him here by mistake.” Rumarin’s ears perked, and he turned to his father.

“In Cyrodiil?”

“Imperial City. He’d been there for over a year, and is receiving commendation from the Thalmor because he bore the sentence quietly after years of destabilization efforts.” Sarulian rolled his eyes, as if resentful that a Khajiit could be an effective Thalmor agent. “What does it matter?”

Rumarin stood, rolling his shoulders. “I’m going for a walk.” Tsabhira’s khajiit father wasn’t Thalmor, but maybe he knew of him. That’d be a nice  _ sorry we had to do this because I have poor planning skills and as the melee fighter I should have been able to keep you out of prison back in Falkreath let alone afterwards  _ gift, right? Tsabhi was down in one of the nearby inns talking to the surprising variety of other outsiders who were rendered invisible to the Altmer by doing the banal service and maintenance jobs that any of them would be ashamed to have their child do. He doubted she’d purposely divert her plans to gawk at a stranger.

“You should go see the man, Ru, by the docks. He’s one of those big cats.” Solinar was excited beyond coherency, but just in case the whole thing came to nothing, he shrugged noncommittally and darted out the door before his mother could decide she wanted to go with him.

The khajiit wasn’t hard to find as he really was  _ huge.  _ There was a name for the type of khajiit that was that big that he was sure Tsabhi would know offhand, but he assumed he wouldn’t be asked so it didn’t strictly matter. He sidled up to the man who was surely too big to even notice another Altmer skulking around, and whistled a little. “Hi there!”

The khajiit looked down, which was truly unnerving because he was sitting down.

“I heard around the tidal pools that you were recently released from an Imperial dungeon.” The khajiit blinked, slowly and deliberately enough that Rumarin understood it as an insult. “If it helps, I’m not here to gossip. I actually have a question.”

“This one supposes, then, that it was as recent as the boat from Cyrodiil allowed.” His voice was just as deep as his body would suggest, and just about vibrated the boards of the dock beneath them.

“Good! I mean, a shame about the whole imprisonment thing, but for my purposes this works out great.” He dropped down into the grass beside the khajiit, who was somehow able to audibly roll his eyes.

“You’re not Thalmor, are you?”

“Funny, my wife said that same thing to me when we met. You’ll be surprised to learn that no, I’m not; just your run of the mill adventurer.” He handled the basic survival competency, while Tsabhi dealt in the obnoxious slog of collecting jobs and perhaps more importantly, the payment for said work well done.

“This one is perhaps more surprised that you have lived long enough to meet him.”

“Harsh. I don’t look  _ that  _ fragile, do I?”

“All of you little elves are fragile to Dro’Baad.”

Dro’Baad.

_ Dro’Baad. _

His blood ran ice cold before his heart suddenly started to race like he was having a panic attack. Evidently this abrupt change in demeanour was noted by his new friend who eyed him curiously. “Your name is Dro’Baad?”

“It is. You understand why an Altmer panicking upon meeting him makes Dro’Baad very nervous, yes?”

“Would you—I need to immediately bring you to the bar.”

He huffed and settled down, his tail even de-puffing as the adrenaline faded. “No offence, elf, but you are hardly Dro’Baad’s type.”

“No, no no no no no. Unless there were two Dro’Baads in the Imperial City dungeons?” He inclined his head curiously, but shook it: only one. “You’re my wife’s father.”

“Impossible. This one does not pass his time with women.” He eyed Rumarin curiously, though, presumably waiting for the right word: and in this case, he knew what that was.

“I have to take you to Tsabhi.” The second he said her name, Dro’Baad stood up to his full and mildly nauseating height. He moved with an unexpected agility for a man his size, and grabbed Rumarin’s shoulder.

“Go, lead us to Tsabhira.” He all but took off in a run, his heart pounding in his ears. He hadn’t known— surely she didn’t know that her father was Thalmor either. What a coincidence, to have something so stupidly banal in common, although certainly the khajiit cooperating with Auri-El’s obnoxious little cult was doing so in a different capacity than his parents: especially if he’d been allowed to rot in jail for over a year.

He threw open the door and didn’t bother to check and make sure Dro’Baad could fit through: presumably a man that size had a plan for small entryways, even if it wasn’t as dignified as one would hope. Instead he scanned the crowd until he found Tsabhi deep in conversation with a khajiit waitress who was looking right at them with a deeply interested expression.

That was a sure indication that Dro’Baad had found his way inside, if the shadow he cast wasn’t enough.

Presumably to see what her new friend was so fascinated with, Tsabhi turned as well. Shockingly she managed to find Rumarin first, smiling and lifting her hand to wave...before she finally noticed her father standing just behind him.

She stood and her chair clattered to the floor loud enough to alert anyone else in the bar that hadn’t already noticed the giant cat. She broke into a run much faster than Rumarin expected, and with the grace of someone who really did have tree-scaling in her blood, leapt from the floor and directly into Dro’Baad’s waiting arms. She was  _ drowned  _ against him, lost in a sea of long, heavy limbs and fur until she managed to shimmy up to his shoulders and throw her arms around his neck.  _ “How?!”  _ she demanded, her voice hoarse with the effort of not crying. Dro’Baad had begun to make some quiet cat noise that Rumarin was sure he would understand as some sort of emotion if he spent more time around the cat people: instead, he was faced with the reality of the shocked and discomfited patrons of the bar.

“We should go outside for this,” he said immediately, extremely tired of his first impulse lately always being to shield Tsabhira from unnecessary criticism. Skyrim was superior in that capacity as well: he and Tsabhi didn’t endanger his parents’ position in their cult by being unsettling to the locals.

“This one just got  _ inside,” _ Dro’Baad groused, but put Tsabhi down anyway. “He is right, though. This bar is made of eyes.”

She was clearly annoyed about it, but she nodded and rushed over to the bar to drop a bag of coin on the counter before darting out the front door. Rumarin followed for convenience’s sake, as Dro’Baad took a minute to arrange himself through the door. Tsabhi paced the entire time, alternatively putting her arms around herself and dropping them in annoyance. The second Dro’Baad was through the doorway she took off again, leading their strange little party back to where she’d run before, after the incident with the seamstresses.

“How?” she repeated, standing stock still even as he sat down. Rumarin dropped down onto a nearby bench, just far enough away that he wasn’t intruding, but near enough that if the whole  _ Thalmor  _ thing was a shock to her, she had somewhere to retreat.

“This one was finally able to leverage his service in the Great War to get sheepishly released and pettily deported,” he said simply. “I was the last. Han-Ilu broke out almost as soon as they dropped him into the cell, and Shakh turned out to be an orc of enough note that it was more trouble to keep them.”

“Why are you here then?” she asked, and Rumarin braced himself.

“I said, deportation. There were two sides to the Great War, ma’peko.” She definitely didn’t know then, and the gears in her head were clearly spinning wildly trying to make sense of what he’d said. “As a young man in Khenarthi’s Roost, there was no greater aspiration than to prove oneself to the Aldmeri Dominion, and given this one’s...unique affliction, he was especially inclined to do so.”

What a curious thing to say. Clearly Tsabhira knew what he meant though, because she frowned and dropped into the grass. “Did Berelin and Gaeleg know?”

“Would they have travelled with us if they had?” He shook his head. “It did not matter. The Alimer will reward this one for his service, but I was not in service to them at the time. It is only convenience that brought Dro’Baad to Alinor to meet…” He trailed off and looked to Rumarin, who was getting the uncomfortable impression that in his haste to drag the khajiit to the bar, he’d dropped the  _ wife  _ bomb a little early. “How did our little goat make her way to this terrible place?”

_ Little goat.  _ He’d have to remember that one, although it was more charming than the cute nickname his cousin had for him growing up. “Oh. I was in a Thalmor prison in Skyrim and Rumarin got his parents to let me out.”

“So he leverages freedom against marriage,” he suggested with a scowl, and Tsabhira laughed.

“If I squint, I can maybe believe that you were Thalmor. Rumarin? Never. We’ve been married for a year, he just didn’t have a better option to get me out.”

“I never said that,” he argued. “There were probably a lot of better options I breezed right past.”

“His parents wanted an Alinor wedding because they hadn’t been invited to the one in Skyrim.”

“Is that where you live now?” he asked, his brow creasing in concern. “This one hardly prefers you to be in the crosshairs of a civil war with bigots on one side and the Imperial machine on the other.”

She shrugged lightly. “I stay out of it, mostly. I live up north and teach mages theoretical philosophy.” The way Dro’Baad’s nose scrunched up in response to that was downright endearing.

“Your man called this one your father, but Dro’Baad thinks he has not met Han-Ilu.”

“Please, Han would be a terror in the classroom.”

Rumarin snorted. “We’ve met exactly one person who can keep up with her lesson plan, and she’s a Telvanni mage.”

“You know a Telvanni?” Dro’Baad asked skeptically, and Tsabhi flushed.

“Han would like Brelyna.”

“You know how he feels about the Great Houses.”

“Yes well, one day we’re all going to have to let go of the second era,” she said irritably, then shook her head. “That’s not fair, I know, but he really would like her. It’s not like she showed up to the school with an entourage of slaves.”

Dro’Baad shook his head, then sighed. “For now, it doesn’t matter. You can argue with him when he turns up again: for now, I think you should tell this one about your weddings.” He glanced back at Rumarin, whose mind had finally wrapped around the far reaching consequences of finding Tsabhira’s largest father.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to circle back to the house. My mother and I were actually doing planning work, and I can’t wait to tell her about the bride’s side.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this chapter was for me. It could be removed entirely from the story and it absolutely wouldn't matter, but I already had some idea that her mentor Han-Ilu (the vestige) reappears just at random. He broke out of prison because no bars can hold chaos incarnate. Shakh I wave off a lot because I'm still not sure what I want from them (maybe depending on 6's timeline we'll find out). Dro'Baad always stayed in prison, though, which frustrated me because you don't make an emotionally closed off pahmar-raht war criminal and then just put him in the dungeon for the rest of the story.
> 
> I started a playthrough in ESO with him because I wanted to play a khajiit and baby was in the proverbial corner, and then I was like 'damn I want him to be mad old too" but Han was already using that one so I went with "cursed with infinite reincarnations, Thalmor soldier". Tsabhi is probably like, knee high to him. I love lore*.


	6. A Wedding and an Ending

The garden bribe hadn’t been enough to actually net them a temple ceremony, but there was a shrine in a poorly maintained coral garden that Tsabhi preferred anyway. Estoril and Solinar were only upset because they expected all gardens to be trimmed and tidy: she rather liked how dangerous it felt, considering that most, if not all, of the guests were only attending to gawk at her. It wouldn’t be very fair to the bride if she were the only one that felt deeply uncomfortable and passively threatened.

She hadn’t known anything about Altmer weddings going in, and erroneously assumed that all Mara-centric ceremonies were the same; not so, as their wedding in Skyrim had taken the better part of ten minutes so early in the morning that they’d gone back to bed afterwards. She was surprised to be ushered to her husband’s side at the outset, smiling uncertainly and habitually reaching out to realign his chestplate. It was more decorative than usual, but it’d been a compromise between him and Solinar, who’d wanted him to wear an old-fashioned and hilarious-looking coat.

“Hello,” she hummed, debating whether or not to tell him that he looked exceptionally handsome. She obviously preferred him in hybrid armour and robes, as that was what she typically designed for him, but the Altmer tendency to out perform in a competition that didn’t exist against nobody was flattering in ways that were just impractical for their everyday lives.

He tugged on her hair, worn down in solidarity and because frankly it wasn’t as big a deal as he made it out to be. “Welcome to what’s sure to be the longest wedding you’ve ever been to.”

“I’ve only ever been to ours, so it’s a low bar. You look nice.” It wasn’t as flattering as what she wanted to say, but she wasn’t convinced that his parents weren’t keeping an ear tuned to them.

“That means a lot coming from someone who the Radiant Raiment should really be paying at this point. I don’t suppose the priests bothered to tell you what we have to do?” He quickly bypassed what she was sure was a stunning compliment from someone who was a little bit scandalised if she so much as displayed a Dibellan amulet, jumping right into the matter of both of them awkwardly standing in the middle of the ceremony space mere moments before the crowd was meant to be ushered in.

“I haven’t seen anyone besides your mother, Endarie, and Taarie since I woke up.” Dro’Baad was somewhere, certainly, being ushered around by Solinar and Estoril who seemed at once pleased to be hosting such a current Thalmor hero, and further gobsmacked that the Bosmer that had already come out of left field brought in perhaps the most shocking addition to the wedding they could have conceived of.

Solinar’s first instinct had been to, in a voice high enough to crack glass, interrogate his son about whether or not Tsabhi was  _ one of those Bosmer-Khajiit.  _ He’d meant Ohmes, he was wrong, and Rumarin had been angry that he’d suggested they were lying about Tsabhi’s race and that it mattered to his father at all. Technically it wasn’t an unfair assumption upon being told that Dro’Baad was her father, but it was just that: a kneejerk assumption.

“Well thrilling news, we just sit up by the shrine and wait.” There was indeed a large cushion sort of thing laid out just in front, and he really did mean  _ sit.  _ “We’re here to be looked at, repeat vows, exchange rings— Mara things. Usually there’s about six generations worth of family to crowd around but we’re a little lighter in family members than a six thousand year old dynasty.”

“That’s all?” She was well aware that their wedding in Riften had been purposely light in content because of Maramal’s relative unfamiliarity with old Nord traditions and the fact that neither of them had brought any traditions into the ceremony (he  _ had  _ asked).

“At the end of the ceremony there’s a handfasting and we drink out of the same cup.” He led her to the shrine and sat down, gesturing for her to do so beside him. “Something something  _ the joining of legacies,  _ except that we’re fairly average people and by Altmer standards, a downright circus on both sides. Once all the guests are seated, the families will come in, they’ll be followed by the priest, and we’ll all have to sit through some sort of epic poem on the power of love.”

“Poem?”

“Altmer poems are long and my father picked it out so it’ll be longer still. Feel free to zone out, I’ll nudge you when we have to do something.” Maybe it was the day, but she felt a rush of sentimentality at how comfortable he was making all of this. She’d been nervous, earlier: she was already such a spectacle, let alone with a pahmar-raht as her only relative. It wouldn’t surprise her if  _ all  _ the guests assumed she was lying about being a khajiit herself, and Solinar and Estoril were unkindly aware of how that reflected on them.

She missed Skyrim. She missed their small (but high ceilinged) cottage, where he made her coffee and teased her about how it was technically a plant (but always made sure to buy the beans from Alinor, not Valenwood). She missed waking up with his head on her chest and just settling in to play with his hair until he woke up, instead of absconding to the room that surely the staff knew she barely used.

“I’m not— I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not  _ upset  _ about the wedding,” he said hastily, and she realised she must have looked a little sad. “It’ll be boring but we’ll get through it and then we get to eat all the fancy catered food we possibly can.”

She laughed, quickly trying to stifle it as the first guest she didn’t recognise entered very confidently through the door for someone who clearly had no idea where to go. “No, I was thinking of home. It’ll be nice to go back where I can tell people to fuck off without causing a multi-generational blood feud.”

More people started to enter, and although she understood it to be a day for the family to work in complete and flawless unison...they really got the long end of the stick, compared to the couple who was still meant to be pretending that they barely knew each other well enough to like or dislike one another. Evidently Rumarin felt the same way, because he sat back in surprisingly poor posture for someone partially encased in metal. “You’re telling me. I hardly get any joy from sitting in the background of important conversations you have and shrugging when they expect me to be on their side for some reason.”

“Who did that?”

“Ancano, if you can believe it. I can’t wait until we inevitably find out that he’s some strange and flaccid brand of evil and get to leave his body out on the front step for the scavengers.”

“You have to stop saying that, or else he really is going to turn out evil and it’ll be a whole month of cleanup,” she scolded, reaching out for the edge of the shoulder cape that was too impractical for combat to integrate into his regular outfit but was a big favourite of hers. It was also long enough that she would only shock the front row by holding it.

“I personally promise you that if I get to stab Ancano in the throat, I will scrub the floor clean on the spot.” Without saying anything or looking towards her, he reached for the hem of her skirt. The roughly three people settled close enough to see looked around incredulously, as if someone was going to charge forward to stop them.

Wisely, no one did.

. . . . .

“I can stay long enough to watch you get your medal,” Tsabhi insisted for the twentieth time, overly warm in the cloak that was going to be a blessing once she stepped through the portal that the Thalmor Ambassador had offered to open for Dro’Baad’s daughter (with a sneer that she didn’t miss).

“No. You will not think of this one as Thalmor,” Dro’Baad said, low enough to not offend the nearby elves. “That part of Dro’Baad’s life is over; after the ceremony, he will go to Skyrim and find you.”

“It’s hardly better there. They won’t even let you in their cities!”

“It is good, then, that you live by a guild that will not turn me away.” He folded his arms over his chest and she sighed.

“Of course not, but you’ll only be bored and Ri’saad doesn’t send people to Winterhold.”

“Ri’saad would not work with this one anyway, for the same reason you never met a high elf when you travelled with us,” he said, shaking his head. “Even without the medal, he has no use for a pahmar-raht who will only upset the Nords.”

“Just be careful, please? You may be safe from the Imperials, but the Stormcloaks would happily throw you into the sea and I’m not even sure they know that the Khajiit are allied with the Dominion.”

“When has this one not been careful?”

“We were all very careful, until one day we weren’t. Let’s keep that day in the past and try to convince the Altmer to drop you in Winterhold instead of making you travel, if you’re sure that you’re done with caravans.” She dusted herself for invisible debris, trying not to let panic overtake her— as if Dro’Baad would leave her sight and she’d only find out then that he’d been a tropical mirage.

“Until then: I think your inlaws are waiting.” He eyed Estoril and Solinar, who were at once glancing over at them and also scolding Rumarin.

“I am an elf with a wealth of parents,” she agreed, then threw her arms around him and squeezed. He no doubt barely felt it, and it was only her good luck that he’d habitually sat down to speak with her or else she wouldn’t have been able to reach him at all, but her heart swelled at the warm grumble that echoed through his body, even if his arms were still. “I’ll see you in Winterhold.”

“This one hopes the Nords make coats large enough for him.”

He shooed her away and she returned to Rumarin’s side. “And  _ write  _ this time, Rumarin.”

“You know, for two people who left me in Cyrodiil you’re  _ very  _ judgy about how much contact I keep,” he groused. His hair was pulled back again and he wore his winter armour, and was as visibly uncomfortable as she was in Alinor’s heat.

“Oh please, you know very well that we did that for you. We didn’t want to uproot you,” Solinar said dismissively. Rumarin very much did  _ not  _ know that, and it was something even Tsabhi knew he neither considered nor particularly cared about. As long as they were Thalmor, however...there wasn’t much that could be done to convince them that anything they’d done was wrong, or that what they were currently doing was in service to a greater wrong.  Regardless of what she thought of Stormcloaks and Imperials (very little, as it were), the Thalmor did even less to endear themselves which she supposed was a mercy. Sheogorath forbid that all of Tamriel join in on their stupid plan to destabilize reality.

“Tsabhi?”

“Yes?” Estoril shook her out of her dark little inner tangent, holding out a shiny silver circlet.

“This is for you. It was wonderful to meet you and you’re welcome in our home at any time.” It was a beautifully wrought piece, made of thin little flourishes that formed the outline of shells. It was so pretty she pushed down the frustration that they simply didn’t understand that she absolutely wasn’t welcome on the island, let alone in the capital. They’d even seemed confused as to why Sarulian hadn’t shown his face to see his cousin off.

“Thank-you. I hope you’ll come see us, if you’re ever in Skyrim.” Rumarin’s expression helpfully added the part she hadn’t said, which was  _ there’s no good reason you would be in Skyrim, however, so I hope you never do. _ “We should go. The portal maker seems impatient.” She seemed broadly disinterested in the whole display and vaguely insulted that she’d been volunteered to cart two nobodies back to Skyrim, but either way that was plenty cause to rush off.

_ “Write,  _ Rumarin,” Solinar called after them, and her husband took off with such urgency that by the time she righted herself, they were standing in the courtyard of Winterhold.

Brelyna yelped, dropping her stack of papers, but upon seeing that it was them she laughed loudly. “About time! I’ve been grading Alteration papers for months!” She bounded forward to hug Tsabhi, and the wood elf felt very oddly like she was going to cry.

“Please, I would’ve stabbed several very specific people to be doing my job that whole time.” She turned to Rumarin, who was stifling a nose bleed. “Ru?”

“Ugh, it’s nothing. We went from hot to cold so fast it’s a wonder my head didn’t explode. Just ignore me.” She reached out and took his arm, wondering at how good it felt to cast even so little as healing hands. She hadn’t got to do much magic at all while they were there, since they agreed there was no way they could predict how the Thalmor would react to a powerful mage who was  _ not  _ associated with the Dominion.

His bleeding ebbed just as J’zargo noticed them, jogging over from the dorms. “You look tanned, Tsabhira! Tell this one everything you learned by plundering the Dominion libraries.”

“Bold assumption that they would let me in at all.” She watched in vague amusement as her husband took a few steps back and then dropped into the snow, sighing loudly. “You’re going to get sick,” she hummed.

“Don’t care.”

“J’zargo did not think you needed permission to enter places you wanted to go!” He seemed genuinely disappointed, but with J’zargo it was always difficult to tell when he was being serious. “Now he owes Onmund fifty septims. The Nord assumed you would be on your best behaviour.”

“He was, unfortunately, correct. Rumarin threw some knives at his cousin, though.”

“Don’t get me started. I’m trying to cold-burn Sarulian out of my head.”

“Is that Tsabhi?” She looked up to the parapets where Onmund had his hands full of a partially broken-down telescope, leaning far too confidently over the walls. “Don’t move! The Jarl’s been leaving messages for you for days.”

“Pah, to the void with Korir. We’ll go down to the Hearth and you can tell us all about Alinor. This one wants to upset Ancano by pretending he’s been there.” J’zargo linked arms with Brelyna, then squinted up against the setting sun at Onmund. “Meet us at the Hearth, once you give Mugnor her telescope back.” The Nord nodded quickly then scrambled away, and Brelyna and J’zargo took off down the path without them.

Rumarin brought himself to his knees, then groaned and pushed his forehead against her back. “What if instead, we just ran as fast as we could past the inn and back home?”

“It’ll only be for a little while,” she assured him, turning so he was nudging her stomach instead. “We’ll leave after dinner.”

“But I’m  _ dying,” _ he insisted, muffled against her cloak. She snorted.

“Come  _ on,  _ crybaby.”

“Will crying help? Because I am  _ happy  _ to try crying.”

“Do  _ you  _ think crying works on me?” she asked, and he groaned again as he hauled himself to his feet and shook off the snow.

“Fine, but I get to tell them that you cried at the wedding.”

“They’ll never believe you.”

“That’s not important. What’s important is planting the seed of doubt in them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This probably should have been two chapters but frankly, the wedding isn't very impressive. I don't like writing weddings, contrary to what this extremely contrived excuse to write a wedding would lead you to believe. I tried to make it tender, give you some Altmer wedding headcanons. UESP says every Cult of Mara does it pretty much the same, but that's boring so here you have "two decorative plates are being exchanged between families, and they will sit there quietly while we do an extremely long ceremony because Altmer are longevity (longleggity) kings and then we cycle through a couple rituals meant to symbolize two becoming one, and accidentally swing a little too close to Bosmer traditions but nobody knows that (handfasting is how to Silvenar and Green Lady do it)".
> 
> Ultimately, I'm here for the touching of hems across an insurmountable distance. Also, the sheer comedy of hindsight.
> 
> And then what can I say? Tsabhi has friends, and those friends didn't stop for three seconds to ask if they SHOULD, only the flex that they COULD further harry two people who had been travelling for *mumble mumble* amount of months from their proper beds.
> 
> Thank you for taking this journey with me. This is almost fifty pages of text, and I dragged you the whole way if you're here. If you're not here, that's too bad.


End file.
